


He Does a Lot of Melting, These Days

by Walking_Pillar_of_Salt



Series: Easy Does It [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Character Study, Introspection, M/M, sure, they're so in love I'm crying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-10
Updated: 2017-02-10
Packaged: 2018-09-23 05:29:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9642635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Walking_Pillar_of_Salt/pseuds/Walking_Pillar_of_Salt
Summary: When Victor thinks back on it, there's no reason for him to not have loved Yuuri Katsuki from the beginning.





	

Victor spent a lot of time looking out of windows. 

He wasn’t wistful, per se. There was nothing, he thought often, that he was searching for, in the lackadaisical sway of the St. Petersburg water, in the shape of the gulls as they cavorted through the air. He had more at this moment - had Yuuri’s glimmering eyes and sheepish smile and the sheen of the ice - than he’d had since...

Well. It had been a long time. 

When Victor wasn’t looking out of windows, though, he was looking at Yuuri, who had come into himself so wonderfully that it hurt Victor, sometimes, to think about, just for the sheer joy of it all. 

Victor remembered, vividly, what Yuuri had looked like when they first met. He made a point of doing so, in fact, because he’d be doing Yuuri a disservice if he ever forgot. He remembered the size of Yuuri’s eyes, their swell and shape and soft tears, and the shake of his hands as they wrapped around each other when he walked away. He remembered the coat Yuuri had worn that day, that looked like it had palpable weight - it had looked like it was squeezing Yuuri’s shoulders in, constricting his chest so his heart was pressed tight into his ribs, hurting with every little beat. 

Victor had thrown that coat away, later. He told Yuuri that he didn’t like the color. 

He remembered Yuuri that night, too, at the banquet. He remembered Yuuri’s eyes, sensual and light, somehow, despite everything Yuuri had been through that day. He remembered the warmth he saw, in those eyes and in his body and in the cant of his hips, in the performance of a lifetime he gave that evening, heart wrapped around a pole and Christophe Giacometti. Yuuri had been a spectacle that day; if he had put that performance on the ice, the gorgeous flurry of his self-loathing and his abandoned doubts and his easy seduction and bright, bright eyes, he would have broken every one of Victor’s records, and done it at a time he thought he least deserved it. 

Yakov had told Victor that he was an idiot, when he mentioned all of this after the Grand Prix Final. Yakov - even with Lilia, when they first fell in love - had never been the sentimental type. Yakov was not one to talk about the things he felt; his feelings were best left unshared, left to settle and grow in the space of a home. His feelings were subtle - they materialized in admonishments and attention and a gentle smile when he thought no one was looking. Yakov never appreciated the beauty of the moment - of a flash of eyes, a quick smile, of the snow catching your eye before melting in your hand - as much as the beauty of being with someone. The beauty of comfort, of stability. Of a simple, solid dependency. 

Victor was raised by ice skating just as much as by Yakov, though, and so he knew the beauty of performance, and of bubble-bright moments unanticipated and unasked for, of sweetness gone as soon as it left the tongue. The splendor of sunflowers, wilting as soon as you looked away, of a hummingbird, flitting between plants and trees and outside of your vision. Victor Nikiforov knew the beauty of quickly-dying things. 

And that was what Yuuri Katsuki was, when Victor saw him that day. 

Yuuri hadn’t literally been about to die, Victor didn’t think. There was something hard about him, something unyielding, principled and strong, that wouldn’t just let him choose that route. 

But Yuuri had been about to quit ice skating. 

When Victor looked back on it, that performance - because he never could call it an imitation - of _Stay Close to Me_ was not a performance of a skater ready to jump into preparing for the season. Yuuri hadn’t told his coach about the performance. He let himself get out of shape, he devoted valuable time that could be used preparing a program practicing a routine he could never use, and he performed it, only once, in front of close friend, and never intended for it to be seen by anyone but her. 

Yuuri hadn’t been skating to stay - that was his swan song, and when Victor saw it, he had no choice but to intervene for fear of what the world would lose.

Yuuri made art when he moved, Victor had learned. His beauty was in nothing so traditional as technique or convention; instead, Yuuri’s beauty lay in his movement, in the way the music shaped his body, in the way the performance moved in his bones. He gave himself to a fleeting sort of artistry, and when it was done, Yuuri nearly quit skating, because he felt he had nothing to show for it.

But Yuuri’s art showed his innards, and they should have been ugly, laid bare like that. 

Victor wanted to lay himself bare like that. 

Victor spent a lot of time looking out of windows.


End file.
